It was my intent to post a new question to write about every day for 2018.

Now, I’m writing the Memory for Day 6, and today is already January 13th. I’m 7 days short already! So Sorry! Maybe I should have tried for 52 weeks of memories!

One of my earliest memories was one between my oldest brother and I. We were in the pasture, in the back of the old Chevy grain truck that Mom would later nickname “Wobble Knees.” It was cold. We both had our heavy coats on, and we could see our breath, and the breath of the cattle that we were (well, he) was feeding, as he pitched ensilage over the side of the truck to our dairy cattle.

For some reason, he must have agreed to let me tag along. (Or maybe Mom begged him to take me.) I had to be somewhere between two and three years old, so it was really nice that he let me go.

Dad usually fed the cattle. But that evening, my brother was the one pitching the silage down to them. Maybe Dad was ill, but my brother was always good to help Dad, especially after Dad’s heart attack.

The reason that this sticks in my mind is because the question that I kept asking my brother was one that he didn’t answer, and couldn’t answer, to my toddler satisfaction.

I must have just been to Sunday School, and we must have studied how God made the world and everything in it, because the question that I continued to ask him was: “Who made God?”

His reply was that God was, and always had been, and always would be, and that no one made God.

My next question, and the next many questions, was: “But. Who. Made. God?”

I know that I asked him that question many times, and I remember that he was patient, if a little exasperated, by the time the cattle were fed.

I don’t remember how he got me sidetracked, nor if he ever convinced me that God was, and always had been, and always would be, and was the Creator, not the created.

In fact, it’s just that that little scene that has replayed in my memory throughout my life, and I’ve wondered if that exchange has played a part in my faith today. And I’ve also wondered if my question might have helped trigger my brother’s desire to become a minister.

That last is a question that I can no longer ask him, as he went home to be with the Lord in December of 2012.

Day Three – 365 Days of Memories – What’s in a Name – Part Three

It just seems only right to add the meaning and/or origin of my husband’s family, and the last name that I’ve shared with his family since we said our “I do’s” in 1968.

The KLINE name…

According to Ancestry.com, Kline is an American spelling of the name Klein, Kleine, Kleyn or Klehn, and can have German, Dutch, and even Jewish origins.

It is probably a nickname or topographic name, and could be derived from ‘wedge’ or ‘wooden peg.’

My husband’s family came from Germany. Their name was Klein when they arrived in America, and was spelled “Klein” for a few generations in Pennsylvania.

Just why it changed to the “Kline” spelling, nor who decided that it should change, I am not certain.

I’m also not certain if all branches of the family, or siblings in the family, changed their name at the same time.

According to www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Kline, the word Klein meant “small” and was a descriptive nickname originally given to someone who was small or short. It could also have been used to describe someone in the family who was younger.

Interesting, because my husband was about 5’6” tall, and his father was about the same height. Makes me wonder, as I write this, how many generations of my husband’s Kline family were short in stature.

This winter was one for the records books for nasty little flu ‘bugs’ going around! But whenever I found myself down and out, I logged onto the digital newspaper site at KSHS.org and began typing in family surnames as keywords!

Below is just one of the many fun little family tidbits that I found:

Stocking – Hitchcock Family Reunion

Wellington Daily News
21 May 1913
Pg 1, Col. 2

Family Reunion

The home of Ralph Stocking, 612 North F, is the scene of a happy party being a family reunion. The guests are Mr. and Mrs. Roderick Stocking, Mr. and Mrs. Elmer Stocking and children, Mr. and Mrs. Porter Stocking and son, John Stocking all of Mayfield, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Hitchcock, of Chicago.

I re-did my membership with the Rutherford B Hayes library, www.rbhayes.org, recently, as I had found some interesting ‘stuff’ on their website, and I really like having access to the www.newspaperarchive.com site and also Heritage Quest, and that is included with the membership I have at that level.

Today, I was searching NewspaperArchive.com website for my uncle, Frank Stocking, and found a copy of my Aunt Peggy’s from the Hutchinson News digitized on the NewspaperArchive.com website. And it never would have occurred to me to look at the Hutchinson News microfilms!! Eureka! I wasn’t doing genealogy when my lovely Aunt Peggy passed away, and so I had not saved it!

It was such a shock when Aunt Peggy died. We knew she had a heart condition, but still, it was a shock. My daughter had been born three weeks before, and we were all looking forward to visiting with Peggy’s brother and his wife when they came to visit in a few weeks, but that wasn’t to be.

I was still off work on maternity leave when we traveled to the funeral, and I took my 2 1/2 year old son and three-week-old daughter with Mom and I to her service.

Aunt Peggy was a ‘hoot.’ She also had a beautiful smile, a heart of gold, and an infectious laugh! She was always cracking jokes, and I miss her.

Norwalk Daily Register
Norwalk, Ohio
20 Oct 1894
Pg 4 Col 6

After visiting friends and relatives a couple of weeks in Clarksfield and New London, Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Stocking left on last Wednesday for their home in El Dorado, Kansas, via St. Charles, Illinois, where they halted to spend a few days with relatives, whence they would start direct for their home; but on Sunday evening, on retiring for the night, Mr. Stocking fell down a flight of stairs, rupturing a blood vessel, the blood flowing from his nose and ears; no bones broken, he never spoke, but lived one hour, when his spirit took its flight across the dark river to that “undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns.” Mr. Stocking was one of nature’s nobility, a true and good man. To Mrs. Stocking and their son, in their bereavement, we extend our sympathies.

John Hurlburt Stocking’s son, Roderick Remine Stocking, was my great-grandfather, and you can find a photograph of him here, as well as more information about him.

Roderick’s mother, Betsey Jane Ames, died in Oct 1856 shortly after Roderick’s little brother Bishop was born. After Betsey’s death, John Hurlburt married Caroline Gates in April 1860.

In 1894, my great-grandfather, Roderick was living on the farm that he homesteaded in Sumner County, Kansas with his wife, Frances “Fannie” Hitchcock.

Many times I’ve bemoaned the fact that my ancestors lived in tiny little rural towns that Genealogy Bank doesn’t have in their collection. (I’m crossing my fingers that they will be added to the Genealogy Bank collection soon!)

Many of my ancestors lived or spent some time here as farmers, ranchers, and teachers in rural Sumner County, Kansas.

So first I determined the town(s) that my ancestors lived near. Many of these small rural towns in the area where my ancestors lived are about five miles apart. For instance, Milan and Mayfield.

Many times those small town happenings were included in both small-town newspapers as well as the larger newspaper(s) in Wellington, Kansas. At some periods of time, I found anywhere from 3 to 6 newspapers that might have my ancestor’s information.

When I typed the name “Mayfield” into the KSHS newspaper database I found the following:

While both my ancestors and my husband’s ancestors settled there before these newspapers came into being, it’s still a good way to locate many of their doings, their family get-togethers, and in some cases even the fact that they traveled with friends by train into Wellington fifteen miles away to shop for the day.

I know this post may help Kansas researchers locate the newspapers they need to search for family info, and I hope that this post will help others looking for their family in other states.

Without the indexing, it takes a lot of time to hunt through microfilm after microfilm, but the good news is that here in rural Kansas, many of my ancestor’s events, and not just their birth and death announcements, but also when they traveled, where they traveled, how they traveled, and even who they may have had for Sunday dinner may be included in those small-town local newspapers columns.

Many thanks to Taneya who left a comment on this blog post, and a link to a great resource to help find other newspaper microfilms!

You may also wish to check the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America site for a directory of newspaper microfilm holdings across the country if you need to ever expand beyond Kansas: http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/

My cousin Maxine and her son Larry loaned me a HUGE box of photographs. It’s so heavy that I can’t lift it! I’ve spent the past 2 – 3 weeks scanning off and on, and some time this week to re-organize and locate the ones that I have questions about.

But just one of the treasures that they’ve loaned me is here below, a photograph of my great-grandfather, (and my cousin Larry’s as well) Roderick Remine Stocking.

I was between 2 and 3 when Great-Grandpa died, and I remember him as a very tall, white-haired gentleman. My mother, his granddaughter-in-law, dearly loved and respected him.

He and his wife, Frances Hitchcock Stocking homesteaded in Sumner County, Kansas, just west of Mayfield and the Chisholm Trail.

Their first home was 10 X 12 and they had to put the table out at night to put their bed down, and their oldest child, my Grandfather Elmer Leverett Stocking was born while they still lived in that home.

I think he is a very handsome and distinguished looking gentleman. And I sure wish I had had the opportunity to get to know him better.

And to ask him all the questions that I now have about family history!

It’s a bit past Monday, but I didn’ t find this little tidbit until Tuesday, while volunteering to hunt for an obit for the Sumner County Historical & Genealogical Society’s requests.

Unfortunately, after looking through the requested time period’s “The Monitor Press” (no longer being published) I didn’t locate the obit, but did find a cool little bit of news that tells me that my Grandfather and Grandmother, Warner and Carrie Jones and family, hosted a family gathering, when my mom was just a bit more than 15 years old.

Milan – Mr. and Mrs. John Roe and sons, Edwin and John from north of Argonia; Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Roe and daughters; Mr. and Mrs. H. H. Breneman and children, Hershel and Ilda Fern, of Wichita; Mr. and Mrs. O. C. Breneman, of Mayfield; Victor Breneman and Kenneth Jones, of Kingman; Mrs. S. E. Breneman; Miss Mildred Swain; Mr. and Mrs. Floyd Jones, of Milan, were dinner guests of Warner L. Jones and family Sunday.

It was neat to read this, and even neater to tell my mom, “I know what you were doing on a Sunday in September, 1937!”

When I read it to her, she said “I know what I was doing, too! If all of those people were there, I was cooking to help feed everyone!”

And if you notice, the article gave all of the out-of-town people’s home towns, and in one case, for a rural resident, even told what area they lived in. What a help! Now I know where these people lived (most likely) in September of 1927!